Nothing is Janne Teller's first book for young adults, and like her previous books with a more adult leaning, are philosophical adventures that ask more questions than they answer. Nothing, though, has far more in common with William Golding's Lord of the Flies than Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World. This is one of the reasons why the novel was banned in Scandinavia (the other reasons were mostly centered around Teller's unpopularity amongst establishment figures who disliked her Marxist political leanings.) It was first published in Denmark in 2000, and was not translated into English until 2011.
The novel tells the story of a seventh grade class who descend into savagery, animal mutilation, and murder after a classmate announces his existential crisis on the first day of school, before walking out and deciding to take up residence in a plum tree at a hippie commune. On one hand it is a bleak and depressing introduction to existential nihilism but on the other it is an insight into the psychological turmoil of kids wondering where they fit in and what their lives mean - if indeed, they mean anything at all. The kids in the novel seem to operate largely outside of parental supervision or guidance, and create their own world, rules and punishments. Nothing is also a warning, and gives the reader a glimpse into the consequences of being swept along in a group of people without having the courage to speak up. If it is true that all it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing, then this book shows us what can happen when those good people stay silent. Rather than being a book with a message about the importance of inclusion and fitting in, this is actually a novel that says the very opposite - that it is important not to fit in, and to be different, if that is what the right thing to do is.
Janne Teller is a Danish writer with Austrian and German heritage, and much of her writing is informed by the philosophies of German thinkers. Before she was a writer she was a conflict negotiator for the United Nations, which is ironic when you consider the way in which the seventh graders in this novel deal with conflict by setting fire to the person they are in conflict with. Despite being banned after initial publication, the English translation by Martin Aitken was a Printz Honor Book in 2011, an American Library Association Batchelder Honor Book in 2012 and the Editor's Choice of Booklist, the critical review of the Bookseller's Association.
